Dividend Achievers Screen
50 Qualifying

Dividend Achievers is an income strategy inspired by an index run by Nasdaq OMX. It looks for companies that have grown their cash dividend payouts for at least the past five consecutive years. Apart from the dividend growth streak, this strategy looks for companies with reasonable share trading liquidity, strong cash reserves, a solid balance sheet and a proven record of consistent earnings growth. In his book Beating the Street, investing legend Peter Lynch, said: "The dividend is such an important factor in the success of many stocks that you could hardly go wrong by making an entire portfolio of companies that have raised their dividends for 10 to 20 years in a row." According to M&G Investments, the total cumulative return from the S&P 500 in the 10 years to 2011, with dividends reinvested, was 32%. But the return soared to 136% by investing solely in US companies that had grown their dividends for at least 25 consecutive years.

Mergent pioneered the US Dividend Achievers Index which is now tracked by $7bn worth of funds managed by BlackRock, Invesco PowerShares and Vanguard. The UK equivalent was launched in 2010. Back tested over 5 years, the UK equivalent apparently outperformed the wider UK index by nearly a percentage point every year. In the 12 months to January 2011, it saw a 20.8% increase, out-performing its MSC benchmark by almost 3%.